Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [9]
Dag waited until the men had left his home, then he slipped out of his cubby and crept over to the side window. He left his mother and his baby sisters behind without a glance, all the while hating himself for his cowardice. Though he was but a child, he was the son of a great paladin. He should have fought. He should have found a way to save his family.
His thin fingers shook as he tugged at the latch holding the shutters closed. For a few terrible moments he feared that he would not be able to open the window, that he would be forced to choose between dying in the smoldering building, or walking out into the arms of the men who had come to steal him away. Terror lent him strength, and he tore at the latch until his fingers bled.
The metal bar gave way suddenly. The shutters swung outward, and Dag all but tumbled over the low sill and into the herb garden that framed the side of the house. He lay where he fell, crouching low amid the fragrant plants until he was certain that his precipitous move hadn’t drawn attention. After a few moments, he cautiously lifted his head and darted a wide-eyed look over the clearing.
What he saw was like something from the lowest layers of the Abyss, horrors that no son of Tyr’s holy warrior should ever have had to endure.
Mounted raiders circled the village, swords raised to cut down any who might try to escape. The thunder of their horses’ hooves echoed through a hellish chorus of voices: the shouts of the raiders, the screams of the dying, the terrible keening grief of those who were yet alive. Above it all was the roar and hiss of the hungry fires. Most of the village houses burned freely, and bright flames leaped and danced against the blackness of the night sky.
Nearby a roof timber crashed to the ground, sending an explosion of sparks into the smoke-filled clearing. The sudden light illuminated still more horrors. Crumpled, blood-sodden bodies lay about the ground, looking more like slaughtered geese than the people Dag had known from his first breath. Surely that couldn’t be Jerenith the trapper over there, gutted like a deer, his own bloody knife lying at his feet. The young woman draped limply over the stone circle of the village well, inexplicably naked and nearly black and purple with soot and terrible bruises, could not be pretty Peg Yarlsdotter. Wasn’t it just this morning that she’d given Dag a honey cake, and kindly assured him that his father would return to the village before first snow?
A familiar voice, raised in a familiar cry, seized the boy’s attention. A wave of relief and joy swept through him. His father, the bravest and most fearsome Knight of Tyr in all the land, had returned at last! The child’s terror melted, and with it disappeared the pain of long days spent watching for his father’s horse, envying the boys whose fathers stayed in the village to tend less exalted tasks.
Suddenly brave, Dag leaped up from the herb garden and prepared to race to his father’s side. There could be no better or safer place in all of Faerfin than on the broad back of a paladin’s war-horse, shielded by his father’s strong sword arm and implacable faith.
He ran three steps before he realized his mistake. The voice was not his father’s after all, but that of Byorn, his older brother. His brother was fighting, as his father would have fought. As he, Dag, should have fought.
Not yet fourteen, not quite accounted a man, Byorn had the courage to pick up a sword and face down the men who rode into his village with cold steel and burning torches. And his voice, when he called out to Tyr for strength and justice, held the promise of matching his father’s deep, ringing tones.
Hero worship battled with terror in Dag’s dark eyes as he watched his brother flail about with a blood-streaked weapon. It was plain even to Dag that Byorn lacked skill and strength, but the